A / N :

Characters : Mort, Keli, mentions of others.

Setting : After the events of Mort, (very) shortly before the events of Soul Music.

Prompt Word : Goodbyes.

"Sto Helit!"

Keli's surprise finds its way into her voice, and she feels herself blush. A moment later she chides herself for it. A queen is never surprised. A queen is unflappable, a fortress with confidence enough to keep safe every subject in her realm.

Mort smiles. It is a tired smile, a wry gesture which seems strangely at odds with the feeling he wants to convey. He looks tired too, worn around the edges, as though he is somehow wearing thin.

Keli recalls his time as Death's apprentice, the time he spent more solid than anything around him, impervious to arrows, walls, and even scumble. A shiver runs down her spine.

Mort politely ignores it.

"Please!" he laughs. "Mort! I never could get used to 'Sto Helit', you know. Though I suppose anything's better than 'boy'."

Keli swallows. "Oh. Yes. I . . . we weren't expecting you."

"No."

Silence falls again. For a farmer's son, Mort has proved a surprisingly efficient Duke – in sixteen years he has accomplished everything her uncle would have, and perhaps a little more. And in all that time, he has never stood before her like this, as though he has forgotten all his manners. As though she is just . . . Keli.

Again she feels the past pressing in on her, an unwelcome weight upon her chest. She has the sense of something closing in, of realities threatening to merge.

"No," she whispers.

"Yes." Mort's laugh this time is unmistakeably hollow. "Time's up. For Ysabell and I, at any rate."

"When? How?" Keli demands. Her indignation does nothing to quell the nausea rising in her throat.

"How? I don't know. And I don't . . . I'd rather not know, I think. But it won't be long."

Indecision wrestles with something else in Mort's expression, and loses. He reaches into the satchel slung over his shoulder, and pulls out something Keli has never seen before – a leather bound book. It is oddly cool to the touch, and when her friend presses it into her unprotesting hands, she glimpses the title embossed in gold on the spine.

Mort.

"Give it to Susan one day. Please? If you ever think she needs . . . help. We've tried our best, but it's so hard to be sure . . ."

The book twitches in her hand as she realizes that Mort's life is being written beneath her fingertips. And there are so few pages left to fill.

Keli nods stiffly, and Mort relaxes a little.

"Ysabell couldn't come," he continues. "I don't think she's ever liked goodbyes. But she wanted to thank you, for everything you've done for us, for . . . for all the years . . ." He coughs. "And Cutwell. I'll miss Cutwell. He'll miss us, anyway . . ."

Mort trails off, and Keli's eyes begin to sting. She is dimly aware of his hand on her shoulder, shaking fingers threatening to shatter her composure, and then his lips brush her cheek.

At a loss, she opens the book.

He hadn't intended to come, she reads. He had thought it might be better to do without goodbyes. But in the event it felt right – this was where it had all begun, after all. With Princess Keli and her murderous uncle, and with Mort, who would alter reality for the sake of a crush, and duel Death himself for his daughter.

And then there had been treacle sandwiches and a silver toast rack, a new family crest and a race to find sensible baby names. And Susan, who read books of logic on her summer holidays and was the reason Ysabell always found herself down to the nougats already.

Mort smiled, ignoring the ache in his heart.

It hadn't been a bad life, all things considered. Really, he thought, he'd had . . . sufficient.